Conventionally, in the field of development of a signal processing method applied to an image, which is an example of a content, a developer has invented a new signal processing method based on evaluation results obtained by viewing input/output images and evaluation results obtained by using an objective image quality evaluation scale.
Examples of the above-described image quality evaluation scale include image quality evaluation using an objective evaluation apparatus that automatically estimates the subjective quality of a video for a multimedia application without involving judgments based on subjective view of a human. Such an objective evaluation apparatus is a video quality objective evaluation apparatus that estimates the subjective quality of a video by analyzing video signals of two systems, that is, video signals of an original image and an evaluation target image, the apparatus including: a feature amount extraction unit that extracts, as feature amounts, the block skewness of the evaluation target image with respect to the original image, PSNR global time variability with respect to frames in a sequence, and PSNR local time variability for each frame; an objective image quality index calculation unit that calculates an objective image quality index by obtaining a weighted sum of the block skewness, the PSNR global time variability, and the PSNR local time variability; a frame rate detection unit that detects a frame rate of the evaluation target image; a correction unit that corrects the objective image quality index calculated by the objective image quality index calculation unit on the basis of the frame rate detected by the frame rate detection unit; and a subjective image quality estimation value derivation unit that derives a subjective image quality estimation value by applying the corrected objective image quality index to a correlation between a predetermined objective image quality index and a subjective image quality (see Patent Document 1).